


Intervention

by Prochytes



Category: Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-16
Updated: 2011-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-19 11:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/200384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah Jane has had too much practice at watching the watchmen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intervention

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for TW “Children of Earth” and DW “The Stolen Earth”. Much more TW in tone and content than SJA: angst, dark themes, and references to character death. Originally posted on LJ in 2009.

Six days after the world ended, there was a car-boot sale at the bottom of Bannerman Road. Sarah Jane’s walk home from a local interview took her through gusts of music, upbeat but unidentifiable. In the open, on cheap and cheerful equipment, even the heaviest of Metal turns tinny.

 

Scrabbling for her door-keys, Sarah Jane made a mental note to go out for a browse when dinner was over. You never knew your luck with car-boot sales. The last one had turned up a beautiful bracelet, which Rani was still wearing. Maybe Luke would like to tag along? Loathe as she was to exploit her son’s gifts, Sarah Jane had to admit that the ability to Kim’s Game whole tables of merchandise at a glance would be an asset.

 

As if on cue, the front door of Number Thirteen opened. Sarah Jane snapped her handbag shut, and looked up with a smile. But it was not Luke who stood on the threshold to greet her.

 

“Sarah Jane Smith? My name is Gwen Cooper. We’ve met – sort of. Sorry for startling you like that. Your son let me in.”

 

“Gwen Cooper?” The Welsh accent stirred a memory of this woman’s face peering back at Sarah Jane on Mr. Smith’s VCU. “From Torchwood?  I saw what happened in Cardiff last week on the news. Is Jack alright?”

 

“Surviving.” Gwen Cooper looked away for a moment, and blinked. “Not that he has any other option, mind. I’m fairly sure you already know that.”

 

“What about…”

 

“It’s been rough. Can we leave it at that, for now? There’s something important I need to discuss with you.”

 

“Of course.” Sarah Jane hung up her jacket beside the door. “Would you like some tea? I doubt that Luke will have offered you any. We may be able to rustle up some digestives, too.”

 

“Mmm, digestives.” Gwen fell in behind Sarah Jane as they moved into the house. “They’re amazing, aren’t they? Digestives, I mean. The way when you dunk them, they can be all firm and together above the surface but a sodden pulpy mess underneath. I’ve never seen anything alien that could approach it.”

 

Sarah Jane frowned and glanced back over her shoulder. “Forgive the impertinent question, Ms. Cooper…”

 

“Call me ‘Gwen’, please.”

 

“Forgive the impertinent question, Gwen, but are _you_ alright?”

 

“Right as rain. Hardy perennial, me.”

 

Sarah Jane contemplated the lie. It had not taken the bright, false note in her guest’s voice to confirm it. Gwen’s appearance, once Sarah Jane could look at her properly, had been enough. The big eyes seemed to leach colour, now, from the Welshwoman’s face; freckles stood out like fly-specks on the pallid skin. As Sarah Jane entered the back room, she wondered how she might tactfully confront the falsehood.

 

Then her gaze fell on the armchair, and all other considerations fled.

 

Luke slumped there, eyes closed, his head supported by a cushion. One arm dangled to the floor. A tiny shard of what looked like wood nestled beside his outstretched hand.

 

“I wouldn’t touch that.” Gwen’s voice was closer than it should have been. Perhaps silent movement was something Jack taught his protégées. Sarah Jane had seen enough of Captain Harkness to know him for a creature of absences, less solid than he seemed: the void, sometimes, behind those eyes, that smile; his movements, when he wanted, too quiet for so big a man. “That’s a Janis thorn, that is.”

 

Sarah Jane moistened her dry lips, and asked what she was morally certain to be a redundant question: “How do you know?”

 

The expected cold weight nestled at the base of her spine. “I’m the one who jabbed it in his wrist. Move forward slowly, Sarah Jane, and empty your handbag on the table. Very good. Now, while I’m taking custody of the items which are just that little bit too sonic, you can tell me what you know about the Janis thorn.”

 

Sarah Jane’s gaze flickered from Gwen’s gun to the armchair. “It’s from a world that humans won’t colonize until the far future. The toxin progressively shuts down the central nervous system, causing unconsciousness, then death. When… when did you…”

 

“Just a few minutes before you got here.” Gwen held up the lipstick for a moment before pocketing it. “Not really my shade of red, to be honest. But yes: there’s still a window to administer the antitoxin.” She patted her jacket. “Here’s one I made earlier.”

 

“I see.” Sarah Jane looked again at the armchair. “You have demands, of course. People like you always do.”

 

“People like me?”

 

“Bullies with guns.”

 

“‘People like me’,” Gwen repeated. “How much do you really know about ‘people like me’, Sarah Jane Smith? Janis thorns, for example. Where do you think Torchwood found them?”

 

Sarah Jane was silent. Her eyes stayed with the pale recumbent figure on the other side of the room.

 

“They belonged to Leela. No need to look so surprised. Torchwood had a very thick file on _her_. Your replacement.” The Welsh voice rapped out the wounding syllables with a schoolmistress’s precision. “Space Sheena sprinkled poison across this planet’s history like Nutrasweet. All we had to do was gather it up. Ever meet her, did you? I don’t think it’s a matter of record.”

 

“Once or twice. Crossing time-streams and all that. Never with…. Never with him.” It did not seem right to say his name. Not here; not now.

 

“No. I can see why he would want to keep the two of you apart. Tell me, Sarah Jane: did you avoid looking at her eyes, too?”

 

Sarah Jane flushed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

 

 “I think you do. And I think that what you saw going on behind those brown-then-blues unnerved you more than any alien ever could: a human being, who chose a life of violence.”

 

“You assume a great deal, Gwen Cooper.” Sarah Jane’s colour was high now, and there was a new edge to her voice.

 

“Funnily enough, that’s just what I was thinking about you.” Gwen’s eyes had not left Sarah Jane’s. “It isn’t about the guns. Violence is a country you’ve never made the effort to understand. But you fixate on firearms the same way other people seize on berets or turbans or leeks or sauerkraut, and convince themselves that’s all there is to know. It’s your get-out, you see, just like it is for… for him. Stops you from thinking about what people like me have to do so you can go on playing ‘Five Go after Aliens’.” The big eyes flashed in the colourless face. “We clear up your shit. No questions asked, and that’s the way you like it.”

 

“If that is your country, Ms. Cooper, you haven’t exactly sold me on applying for a visa.”

 

 “Oh, I wasn’t born there. I’m a stranger in paradise. But I’m also a fast learner.” Gwen slid a sheet of paper across the table. “Read this.”

 

Sarah Jane glanced at the paper, and looked puzzled. “‘Two-for-one deals at Jubilee Pizza’?”

 

“Other side.”

 

Sarah Jane flipped the flier, and scanned a handwritten list of names. “These are government ministers and officials. All high-ranking. And all…”

 

“Complicit.” Gwen leaned forward. “Every last one of them was instrumental in the plan to sell humanity out to the 456. All you have to do to save your son, Sarah Jane, is wake up that affable AI of yours, and ask him for their details. Where they live. Blueprints of their houses. The specs of their security systems.”

 

“And what do you plan to do with those details once you have them?”

 

“You’re a journalist.” The gappy smile might once have been pretty. “Use your imagination.”

 

“The lives of those men and women for Luke’s. Is that your deal?”

 

“That’s my deal.”

 

“I see.”

 

The tinny music from the car-boot sale squeezed itself into the silence. It was not possible to hear whether Luke was breathing.

 

“You look thoughtful, Sarah Jane.”

 

“You’ve given me a lot to think about, Ms. Cooper.”

 

“Don’t think too long. The window for the deal is closing fast.”

 

“The deal?” Sarah Jane sighed. “Heavens, I’m not thinking about _that_. I gave it the consideration it deserved, which was none at all. No; I’m thinking about how I’m going to save Luke, and the people on your list, and, last but not least, Gwen Cooper, I’m thinking about how I’m going to save you. That, I suspect, will be the tricky part.”

 

“Ah. You pick ‘neither of the above’. Another way. Care to tell me what that is?”

 

Sarah Jane shrugged. “Still working on it. Trust me: you’ll be the first to know.”

 

“And what if there isn’t another way? What if this time you can’t stop _someone_ from getting hurt?”

 

“Then you’ll have to kill the pair of us.” Sarah Jane closed her eyes. “Make no mistake, Gwen. I grieve for your losses – for whatever it was that wounded you enough to drive you to this. And I will gladly use Mr. Smith and all the other resources at my disposal to bring the guilty to justice. But I won’t stand by and hold that natty leather jacket for you while you butcher your way to peace of mind.”

 

Sarah Jane looked back across the table. “I will not be patronized in my own home, Gwen Cooper. You’re what? Thirty? I’m an old woman now. At my age, life is built on the landfill of private tragedies. Mrs. Siddiqui at Number Twenty-Seven has cancer; she thinks that no one knows. Mr. Jenkins at Number Thirty-Two puts out a table setting every night for the wife who died in 1996. Do not delude yourself that Bannerman Road is any less real than your world, for all its guns and thorns and violence and deceit. My answer is no.”

 

“Why?” Sarah Jane saw the pale fingers tightening.

 

“Because, trite as it sounds, what you are asking is wrong.” Sarah Jane took one last look at the armchair, and swallowed. “And because I did not raise my son to love a mother who would buy his life back at such a price.”

 

“I see.” Despite her obvious exhaustion, Gwen had previously displayed a twitchy, febrile energy, all the same. Now, as the gun dropped from her hands, she looked more tired than anyone Sarah Jane had ever seen, even an alien with the weight of centuries on his shoulders. “Thank you, Sarah Jane. I’m truly sorry for what I just put you through.”

 

Sarah Jane darted a glance at Luke. “The Janis thorn…?”

 

Gwen stared back at her wordlessly.

 

“Oh. Of course. It isn’t a Janis thorn at all, is it?”

 

“It’s half a tooth-pick.” Gwen’s head was bowed now, her face veiled by the fall of hair. “I bought a packet of them at that car-boot sale down the road. A hundred for a pound, very reasonable.”

 

“Did Torchwood ever actually have Janis thorns?”

 

“Yes. Ianto grew them, in the hothouse. He… spent a lot of time there.”

 

“Ianto?”

 

“He was on the Copper Foundation com-link, with me and Jack. Ianto Jones.” Gwen’s gaze was still fixed on the floor. “He’s dead now. Ianto got to see the wonders of the universe, but not thirty.”

 

“I very much wish that I had known him.” 

 

 “So do I.”

 

“And Luke…?”

 

“Luke’s sleeping off a harmless sedative. I slipped it in his drink – he _did_ make me some tea, by the way. He’ll wake up shortly with a bad taste in his mouth, but in this world that’s something he’ll get used to.” Gwen glanced at Sarah Jane; then dropped her head again. “Though with you for a mum, I’m not so sure.”

 

Sarah Jane quietly moved to sit beside the younger woman. Gwen flinched, but did not pull away. “Why did you…”

 

“I had to see.” The words were tumbling, now, from Gwen’s lips. “What I did to the two of you was twisted and brutal and sick. But I had to be sure. If I’m ever going to sleep again, I had to see.”

 

“See what?”

 

“Why we’re worth saving.” Gwen would not look up. “I didn’t come here to start a revenge spree, Sarah Jane. I came here to find the person who could show me why I shouldn’t.”

 

“Gwen…”

 

“I tried to see.” The Welshwoman’s voice was low, almost inaudible. “Before I came here. Just one candle in the night - that would have been enough. I tried so hard. But I couldn’t. Drowning in ink, poor Tosh called it. At least she was spared what you have to do. Fighting to keep the monsters from the door when they’re already sitting on the sofa.”

 

“I see no monsters in this room, Gwen Cooper.”

 

“You’re not looking hard enough.” Gwen finally lifted her eyes again to meet Sarah Jane’s. “Poisoner; kidnapper; thief. Whatever happens next, I deserve it.”

 

“My poor dear girl,” Sarah Jane wrapped an arm around her shoulders, “did Torchwood teach you nothing worth knowing?”

 

The fumes of the drug were slow to clear from Luke’s head. For the first few seconds after waking, his faculties lacked their usual edge, and he viewed the tableau before him with detachment. The older woman sat upright; she gently stroked the dark hair of the younger, whose face was turned to her shoulder. Neither spoke. In the quiet room, lit by the slanting light of evening, they looked remote and obscure as a relief on a tomb.

 

  
FINIS   


 


End file.
